The Last Month
by Bellephont17
Summary: "Deal me in". Anything to get off the rack and stop the torture. But what happens when a hardened, demonized Dean recognizes the soul he is cutting up? What if it is someone he loved in another life? M for strong violence and mild sexuality.
1. Thirty Years

_Dear Readers, _

_Before you read this, please realize __**I have only watched up to the end of season 4**__. I don't know what happens after and do not WANT to know until I watch it. __**Please be careful not to give anything away if/when you review**__. Thanks so much! Also, if there are errors in my text regarding the plot, please forgive me and understand why I am so clueless. Hope you enjoy regardless!_

_As a bonus, __**those who leave the best reviews will be given cameos in my work**__! If you want a chance to tell Sam or Dean just how much you love them, be saved by the Winchesters, help them defeat a demon, etc. __**give a stellar review and look for the possibility of your name in the story**__! _

_(I do not own Sam or Dean Winchesters, more's the pity. However, I am quite glad I don't have anything to do with Alastair or Ruby. They should be grateful of this twist of fate as well, or I would make them suffer like holy water never did.)_

**Thirty Years**

Alastair made another cut. A slow one that sawed right down to the bone and then through it. Pain and blood skyrocketed, hitting the low-hanging stone ceiling. Dean Winchester didn't scream. He couldn't. His tongue had been cut out, making the luxury of screaming impossible. Instead, blood catching in his throat and threatening to suffocate him, he whipped his head from side to side.

All around, the rising and falling of agonized shrieks came from the other racks. Dean used to wonder why they called hell an ocean of fire. Now he knew – the pain was the fire, and the ocean was the undulating sound the souls made as they poured their grief to the sky and it fell back on them, a hundred times worse.

Another cut. Another spurt of gore, and then a thud and a splash as Dean's left leg was unharnessed and allowed to roll off the rack and into a puddle of blood. Dean kept a tight control of the nausea roiling in his stomach. If he let it up, he'd drown in it. After thirty years of limbs being cut from his body, he should be used to it. But then again, if he did get used to it, then it wouldn't be hell anymore, which would be beside the point.

"Come on, Dean," sighed Alastair, stopping to go over and stand by the young soul's head. "You're making this very tedious. Won't you even consider . . .?"

Dean rolled his eyes up to the demon's hideous, wrinkled, blood-spattered face. Alastair sucked on the bloody knife.

"Aren't you going to answer me? Oh!" The demon laughed. "I forgot, you don't have a tongue this time round. Well, nod or shake your head, then. Just a little nod. And it will all be over. You never have to worry about being put on the rack again. All you have to do is take up the knife yourself. You know you want to. Make someone else suffer for a change."

It was force of habit now that made Dean shake his head. He had long since stopped caring about the people on the racks all around him, much less pitying them. He had even stopped pitying himself – pity was an emotion that tormented the soft. Every last bit of softness in Dean had been torn from him during the first twenty years. The last ten years, all that had kept him on the rack and unyielding to the demons' promises of freedom was sheer rebellion, a hard hate that made submission to their will impossible.

Alastair sighed. "Fine. But realize you bring all this upon yourself." The demon left Dean's head, went to stand beside the soul's bared abdomen, and plunged the knife deep through Dean's stomach. This time, Dean didn't care if he had a tongue or not.

He screamed anyway.


	2. Nightmares

**Nightmares**

Drinking Ruby's blood always gave Sam strange dreams. Horribly real dreams. Dreams that woke him up in a cold sweat, often fighting invisible monsters or blinded by unshed tears. But it was the price he had to pay for the wonderful rush her blood gave him, the sick, infected, wonderful feeling of being stronger than anyone and anything.

Still, sometimes he wished the dreams would stop following him into every post-coital slumber. Especially when they were as bad as last night's. He shuddered, then slammed the skillet into the kitchenette sink so hard it dented. Ruby, sitting at the small table in one of Sam's large shirts, looked up at him, barely phased by his outburst.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked softly as Sam fumed over the battered pan.

"No."

"Sam . . ."

"I said I don't want to talk about it, Ruby, alright?" Sam stared at the wall, fingers gripping the edge of the counter.

There was the squeak of a chair being pushed out from the table, and suddenly Ruby was standing beside him, one hand on his bicep. "Then at least look at me. You haven't looked at me all morning, Sam. What is it, what did I do?"

Sam licked his lips, glanced down at her face framed by dark hair, and saw it momentarily covered with blood. Dean's blood. Twitching, he turned away again, slapped the counter with the heels of his hands once, and then left the kitchenette, retreating into the bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind him.

"Sam!" Ruby's voice, hard and angry now, came from behind the door. She slapped the door with her palms, making it rattle on its hinges. "Sam Winchester, open this door right now! We have to talk!"

He was frightened of her. Repulsed and frightened. The doorknob rattled again. He involuntarily put the bed between him and the shivering door. The bed . . . It was no longer a bed – it was a rack, like it had been last night in his dreams. Dean was splayed across it, buck naked and lacerated by a million cuts. Blood ran down every inch of skin. His face was twisted in a rictus of agony. Demons were swarming around him, black smoke pouring into his mouth only to burst out of his chest in a spray of shattered bone.

Ruby was sitting cross-legged beside the rack, dressed how she had been earlier that day in a gray leather jacket and skinny jeans, idly peeling the skin and flesh off his brother's fingers with a razor. She picked out the strips of skin and sucked them delicately in her mouth as though they were carrot shavings in the salad bowl. She invited him for a taste. She said it was good. Sam listened to her and then agreed with her. All the while Dean screamed his name. But Sam didn't help him – Sam was too busy eating . . .

"Gah!" Sam fell back into the dresser when Ruby kicked open the door and shattered the vivid memory.

"Sam," Ruby scaled the bed and grabbed his face in her hands. She locked her eyes on his and didn't look away. Her breath smelled like fresh toothpaste and knocked some sense into him. No matter how vivid the dream had been, it was still only that – a dream. It hadn't happened, and he was being unfair to Ruby for holding her accountable for his own warped imagination.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, eyes still fixed on the bed, making sure it didn't morph into something out of his nightmares again. "I had a dream last night. I guess it kind of shook me up." He attempted a smile and a laugh, but it melted on his face the instant he put it on and dissolved into a worried pucker.

Ruby smoothed the hair away from his forehead. "Was it about Dean?"

Sam nodded.

Ruby bit her lip. "You realize the only way you're ever going to get peace . . ."

". . . is by killing Lilith," Sam nodded again. "I know. You've told me that. But still – how is it going to help _him_?"

"By honoring his memory."

Sam took a deep, inhaling breath. "But he isn't just a memory, Ruby. He's still out there – _down _there – somewhere, suffering. _Every day._ Fighting Lilith isn't going to bring him back."

"Nothing can. But at least fighting Lilith will bring some good out of all this," Ruby leaned in to kiss him. "Please, Sam. Eat something and then we can go hunting. Those demons we got wind of yesterday will be long gone by nightfall."

Sam relented. Ruby was trying to help him. Hell, she _was _helping him. She was offering herself as a kind of supernatural steroid just so Sam could gain the closure he needed. But the fact remained, a small part of himself nagged, that she was a demon. One of the things that were torturing his brother this instant. If she were in hell, she would be doing the same.

And the whole crux of the issue, the subtle or not-so-subtle indication of his dream, was that by drinking demon's blood and embracing that part of himself, Sam himself was – in trying to redeem Dean – actually joining forces with the enemy side.


End file.
